(RSF/IFEX) – On 10 October 2002, RSF expressed its support for Shohdy Surur, webmaster for the Egyptian newspaper “Al Ahram Weekly”, whose appeal against a one-year prison sentence will be heard in a Cairo courtroom on 14 October. He was sentenced in June for posting a sexually explicit, socially critical poem written by his late […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 10 October 2002, RSF expressed its support for Shohdy Surur, webmaster for the Egyptian newspaper “Al Ahram Weekly”, whose appeal against a one-year prison sentence will be heard in a Cairo courtroom on 14 October. He was sentenced in June for posting a sexually explicit, socially critical poem written by his late father 30 years ago on another website.
“This conviction, which is unprecedented in Egypt, is quite grotesque,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “Why should he be found guilty today of something written back then by his father, who was himself never prosecuted during his lifetime?” Ménard asked. “While claiming to defend public decency, the authorities are in fact stifling free expression on the Internet. In 1993, the Constitutional High Court ruled that the right to criticise persons, including public officials, was an integral part of democracy. This right should apply to any media,” Ménard noted, adding that if Surur’s sentence was confirmed, “Egypt will join the club of countries who are enemies of the Internet.”
Surur was sentenced on 30 June under Article 178 of the Penal Code, which forbids the possession of material for sale or distribution “with intent to corrupt public morals”. He had posted a poem, entitled “Kuss Ummiyat”, on the website www.wadada.net, which is partly devoted to the work of his poet and actor father, Naguib Surur. The poem is said to contain passages that are “an affront to public morals”.
The poem was written by Naguib Surur in earthy and sexually explicit language, as a criticism of Egyptian society and culture after the country’s defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel. He likens Egypt to a prostitute several times in the controversial poem. Since no law refers to the Internet, the charges were brought under the law on public morals.
The poem has been available on the United States-based website www.wadada.net for the past three years. Its author, who died in 1978, was never prosecuted for writing it. Though never published in Egypt, the poem is very well known in the country and audio cassettes of it are easily found.
Shohdy Surur was arrested on 22 November 2001 at his home, which was searched. His computer was also seized. Police interrogated him for three days.
Surur, who has dual Russian and Egyptian citizenship and lives in Russia, will not be attending the appeal hearing, which means the appeal may be rejected and the jail sentence confirmed.
Surur was born in Russia (his mother is Russian), and is one of Russia’s Internet pioneers. He was part of the team that created the country’s first webzine (www.zhurnal.ru). The website features a Russian translation of John Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”, which Surur later translated into Arabic. He has worked in Cairo as webmaster for the English-language newspaper “Al-Ahram Weekly” since 1998.
